


Congeners

by AndreaLyn



Category: House M.D.
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-21
Updated: 2014-06-21
Packaged: 2018-02-05 15:21:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1823170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndreaLyn/pseuds/AndreaLyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All the makings of Chase's world started with one woman, more important than all the rest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Congeners

_you stand out, it's so loud_  
and so what if it is  
-remy zero, fair  
  
*  
  


_juniper berries_

  
  
The pharmacist he had been sleeping with – because dating was too broad and too kind of a word for what they were doing – had been more into homeopathy than he had ever really wanted in a woman. She recommended herbs and berries for things like arthritis and headaches. She vouched for a dash of Echinacea to heal heartbreak and after he gently suggested that she veer back towards actual medicine, she’d broken up with him then. If anyone asked, he’d dumped her first for the lunacy when it came to healing. Physician, heal thyself. Just not with berries.   
  
And of all things, juniper berries.   
  
He was flipping through charts and cases, trying to ignore the persistent and pressing thoughts from his most recent breakup, fighting the urge to remember how much time and money he’d spent on that particular relationship.   
  
“Dr. Chase?” a nurse said, voice stringent. “There’s a crash, in room…”  
  
“I’m on it,” he announced quickly. He already knew who it was, because he only had one critical patient on this floor. She was a nice woman of about fifty-two named Mrs. Barth, going through DT’s.   
  
Forty minutes later, she was stable once more.   
  
*  
  
 _He crept into the house under the hush of midnight and the bathing white lights of a full moon, using the trellis of roses as his accomplice, avoiding most thorns with the expertise of a kid who escaped his prison nightly. Swinging one leg over the top and poking the screen open, he hadn’t expected to find anyone there, much less her._  
  
Sitting there, a glass in hand, sitting in his reading chair – a gift from Dad, so he could be better-rounded, because Dad approved of books and studying, but not sports. His heart had near-stopped and he pressed a hand to his chest, cursing softly under his breath – something not approved of by Mum.   
  
“Robert,” her voice was cold and stern.  
  
“Mum,” he said in reply, knowing what was coming.   
  
But instead of the yelling and the usual throes of drama, she simply lifted herself from the chair and the moonlight glinted off the glass, reflecting a full helping of the clear liquid. He was confused, but not about to press his luck.  
  
She didn’t even ask where he’d been. It was the first time she hadn’t asked that.  
  
In retrospect, he should have seen that as the beginning of the end.  
  
*  
  


_orange peel_

  
  
With Fiona, her obsession with the flame had been contagious – to a point. At first, it had been risqué and a little bit dangerous and he’d liked the zest of the experience, of getting that lit match just so close to her hipbone, or letting her control his hand with the lighter, singing her arm. That faded when the burns got too deep, when the acrid smell filled his nostrils and all he could do was see fire for what it really was, what it was really doing. It was harm, it was hurting, it was not fun in any way, and this seemingly innocent little thing was going to hurt someone so badly in the end, they might die.   
  
Sometimes, he wonders what happened to Fiona; debated asking Annette how she was doing lately. He never did.   
  
In the hospital, as he slung his stethoscope around his neck and wandered away from Mrs. Barth, his mind turned to thoughts of ‘do no harm’ and how he’d really screwed that one up.   
  
“How’s she doing?” a petite nurse on duty asked, with the little voice that sounded like helium. He glanced at her as he was filling out his report and hesitated to speak, still trying to stop the blurring of past and present in his head. “She’s so nice,” the nurse gushed. “I’d hate for anything bad to happen!”  
  
“She’ll…” No, she won’t be fine. “She’s okay, for now.”  
  
But she probably wouldn’t be for much longer. You don’t just toss an alcoholic back onto the streets and expect them to ask for water instead of vodka. You just don’t.   
  
*  
  
 _He woke up to the sound of glass smashing and he rubbed at his eyes, groaning and cursing the morning wood he’d woken up with. He was really starting to hate this puberty thing and hated it even more when he couldn’t go to either parent to talk about it, landing him in the library to research it._  
  
He slipped on a pair of socks and when he was ready to be seen, crept down the Scarlett O’Hara staircase towards the kitchen, careful of where he was treading. He was supposed to have been alone that night, Mum going out with other socialite women to a fundraiser, where martinis would wet the resolve of even the most unresolved giver. He’d been worried, of course, because an open bar and his mother didn’t mix, but he figured with a hundred peering eyes, she wouldn’t overindulge, would just enjoy a drink or two.   
  
“What’s going on?” he asked groggily, staring at the shards of glass all over the floor.  
  
She just looked up, mascara running, a sneer on her pretty lips, staring at him. “Next time your father decides to show up at a benefit,” she snapped, sending another of his father’s good scotches to the ground, amber liquid pooling around the shards, “tell him to give me a little warning.”  
  
He wasn’t sure what to do, so he just stood there and stared, opening his mouth to beg her to stop, but he knew he’d just be inciting a round of drunken criticism on himself. And so, he did the cowardly thing.  
  
“Be careful,” he warned, mumbling, heading back to bed.  
  
*  
  


_angelica root_

  
  
Cameron, for all her skills, was the one thing that House said he hired her for; she was a beauty. When he and Cameron had slept together, he’d noticed that, the way her face settled into such soft innocence in her sleep that painters could have used it for a template of angels in their renaissance works. He didn’t really want to be accused of sexism, because he actually thought she was brilliant and pretty much worried on a daily basis that she was going to kick his arse and make him look stupid.   
  
But really, you couldn’t deny that she was gorgeous. It was after they had sex that he realized just  _how_  Cameron was pretty. She was pretty in the way that paintings of forlorn angels were, when they sat there, perched close to heaven with their wings trailing behind them. She was beautiful like a sad Botticelli, because she was beautiful, but there was something there in her eyes, or in her posture that she said she wasn’t happy.   
  
That she was as broken as the bottles and glasses in his past.   
  
He didn’t actually stay the rest of the night, because seeing that picture of still innocence unsettled him and he needed to get back into a place where he could remember that not every beautiful thing got marred in the end.   
  
*  
  
 _The hospital stays started the day he came home from a math exam with the bad news that he thought he’d bombed it – which, in his father’s definition, was anything below a ninety. The house had been silent, so he figured he was blessedly alone and tossed his books and bag anywhere, calling out a brief, ‘I’m home!’ just in case someone was around, maybe one of the housekeepers, or one of the cooks they had started to hire in recent weeks._  
  
He rounded the corner of the lounge, already rehearsing his excuses for his grades on the exam when he staggered to a stop, seeing the sight on the floor, which send his whole world crashing down around him, settling on his shoulders and weighing him down heavily. He caught his breath and pushed himself out of his frozen haze, rushing to her side in what felt like slow-motion.  
  
She lay there so still and perfect and it scared him because it looked like she was dead, a bottle of gin by her side like a murder weapon. He couldn’t even tell if she was moving or not, whether or not her heart was beating. She looked like a perfect and pale angel who had fallen to Earth, who had lost her wings and her innocence in the fall and the crash towards the ground.   
  
His fingers shook as he pressed them to her neck and found a pulse, the proof she was still just a beautiful woman and not some ethereal being that was going to fly away from him.   
  
She roused and offered him a drunken smile and he smiled back, phone in his hand so tightly that he couldn’t let it go if he tried. The ambulance was on its way. It wouldn’t be the only time they did this, to the point where it was a weekly routine and the paramedics knew him by name.   
  
But she wasn’t going to fly away. Not this time.  
  
*  
  
The flatline of the monitors felt amplified in his head and when the pretty little nurse with the high-pitched voice looked at him in confusion as he left the room, he couldn’t say anything at first.   
  
Eventually, he did speak. “She’s gone,” he told her quietly. “Time of death, seven forty-two PM. Mrs. Josephine Barth.”  
  
He kept walking, leaving the stunned nurse in his wake.  
  
There was a glass of gin and tonic somewhere waiting for him; not to drink, but just to remember the one woman who was the cause of all the rest in his life.   
  
THE END


End file.
